from the Secret(s)-Service dept

They get to wear nice suits, wield guns and hang around the President. They're entrusted with protecting perhaps the most important person in the world. The US Secret Service should only be staffed with the best the nation has to offer. Instead, its recent protective efforts can be generously described as "almost adequate" and it's apparently staffed with an assortment of vindictive children who can't stand the thought of having their shortcomings questioned.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz heads up the House Oversight Committee, which is tasked with investigating allegations that Secret Service agents had spent several hours drinking before (literally) crashing a "suspicious package" party being thrown in their absence on a street near the White House. Almost as soon as the hearings began, Secret Service agents began looking for some way to tear Chaffetz down.

Employees accessed Chaffetz's 2003 application for a Secret Service job starting 18 minutes after the start of a congressional hearing in March about the latest scandal involving drunken behavior by senior agents. Some forwarded the information to others. At least 45 employees viewed the file.

If this internal sharing of personal info were the extent of the wrongdoing, it would still be illegal. The US Privacy Act forbids the disclosure of these records, absent the written permission of the record's subject. Obviously, Chaffetz was never approached by the Secret Service to get his OK for using his job application against him. But this isn't the end of the agency's misconduct.

One week later, Assistant Director Ed Lowery suggested leaking embarrassing information about Chaffetz in retaliation for aggressive investigations by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into a series of agency missteps and scandals, the report said. Days later, on April 2, the information about Chaffetz unsuccessfully applying for a job at the Secret Service was published by The Daily Beast, an Internet publication.

"Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out. Just to be fair," Lowery wrote March 31 in an email to fellow Assistant Director Faron Paramore.

"Just to be fair." Let's take a look at that statement. Lowery's employees embarrassed themselves, both in terms of protecting the White House and showing up for work sober. And yet, the "fair" thing to do was to discredit a politician actually performing his job: the oversight of government agencies.

Lowery says he never ordered anyone to release any information the agency had on Chaffetz. (He just heavily suggested it...) He told the Inspector General that saying the "embarrassing" information "need[ed] to get out" was only a reflection of his anger and frustration. It's not as though anger hasn't been known to push people towards regrettable actions. Obviously, Lowery regrets this now that he's been caught, but claiming "the anger made me do it" doesn't excuse his support of illegal activity being performed by his agency.

DHS head Jeh Johnson officially apologized to Rep. Chaffetz, following it with this consolation prize:

"I am confident that U.S. Secret Service Director Joe Clancy will take appropriate action to hold accountable those who violated any laws or the policies of this department," Johnson said.

This may be true. Clancy was called out of retirement to take over the agency after the previous Secret Service head was booted following the White House security breaches. But it's still the sort of "promise" no one should accept at face value. The government is routinely terrible at holding its own employees accountable for their actions, and -- recent high-profile disgraces aside -- the Secret Service is no exception.

The attempted use of personal information by agency employees to discredit someone engaged in investigating their wrongdoing is a gross abuse of power. Many government agencies have access to a wealth of personal information, especially for those who have been entrusted with security clearances or have applied for certain federal positions. Just think of what one could do with access to even greater amounts of personal information.

from the that's-not-the-way-'justice'-works dept

We recently covered the arrest of two students for their connection to a bullied girl's suicide. I noted at the time that, while certainly not perfect, at least the two were charged with violating laws already on the books, rather than a newly-crafted (and, most likely, badly written) cyberbullying law.

The Florida sheriff investigating a girl's suicide allegedly prompted by online bullying said he's considering charging the parents of one of the two girls arrested in the case because they're in "total denial."

Polk Country Sheriff Grady Judd told Fox News Thursday that if evidence indicates the parents of one of the two girls knowingly allowed the girl to post the bullying comments online, they could be charged with contributing to the dependency or delinquency of a child.

It's not enough for Judd to have arrested two students. Now, he's seeking to extract some sort of vengeance for a perceived "lack of remorse" on the part of Guadalupe Shaw, the 14-year-old arrestee, even if it means stretching the law so he can go after her parents. In Judd's mind, they're "in denial."

Shaw's parents have maintained their daughter's account was hacked and that she never made the posts that got her arrested. They also claim to check in on Shaw's account "daily." Whether or not any of those claims are true (or at least should be subject to an investigation before making very public claims) apparently doesn't matter to Judd, who has his own opinion on how Shaw's parents should have handled things after being informed of their daughter's posts.

"You tell me that there's not parents, who instead of taking that device and smashing it into a 1,000 pieces in front of her child, says, 'Oh, her account was hacked?' We see where the problem is."

Judd says "we," but he's likely on his own. This is no longer a case he should be in charge of. He's made it personal and is drifting dangerously close to turning this into a vendetta. And, again, he's doing this solely because in his opinion, Guadalupe Shaw isn't showing enough remorse for her actions.

"We knew that there was total disregard for life, and if she would say those things after she bullied Rebecca and after the parents knew that, we had to act more quickly," Sheriff Grady Judd, from Polk County, Fla., told "Fox and Friends" Wednesday morning.

"They don't think there is a problem here, and that is the problem," he said. Judd added that the girl's parents gave her back her Facebook access even after learning about her alleged bullying of Rebecca. "That's terrible," he said. "That's why we moved fast to lock their daughter up."

The investigators working for him can't be happy with Judd's crusade. They haven't found anything they can charge the parents with, but it's pretty clear Judd won't be taking no for an answer.

Judd told NBC's Today on Wednesday that investigators so far have found no criminal charges that could be filed against the parents, "but if we can find contributing to the delinquency of a child, we would certainly bring that charge."

Bringing charges against someone for "contributing" to another person's suicide is problematic and it's an area someone like Judd shouldn't be so willing to wander into using only his perceptions of other's attitudes and thoughts to guide him. Grasping about for charges to file against Shaw's parents, who are even further removed from Sedwick's suicide than their daughter, is a dangerously desperate act.

If he manages to follow through and successfully have both Shaw and her parents prosecuted, he won't set any legal precedents, but he will set a low bar for future arrests. With Judd around, no one in his county will need a new cyberbullying law to abuse because the sheriff is perfectly capable of abusing the laws he already has.